Great Space

2022-05-04 19:26:44 Record-breaking 'black-widow' pulsar found just 3,000 light-years from Earth
The newfound system is the tightest such cannibalistic binary known.

A fast-spinning pulsar hungrily feeding on a close companion star has been found 3,000 light-years from Earth in a rare type of cannibalistic system known as a black-widow binary. Around two dozen black-widow binaries are currently known in the Milky Way galaxy. They typically feature a pulsar, which is the spinning neutron-star remnant of a massive star that exploded in a supernova, stealing matter from a companion star.

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2022-05-02 22:06:14 Rocket Lab will try to catch a falling rocket with a helicopter today

After nearly three years of preparation, small satellite launch company Rocket Lab will attempt to catch one of its rockets in mid-air today, after launching the vehicle to space from New Zealand. As the rocket falls back to Earth, Rocket Lab will use a helicopter to try to snag the booster just before it hits the ocean. That way, the rocket can potentially be launched again.

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2022-04-30 23:40:31 Mars helicopter spots wreckage from Perseverance landing
The aftermath of a nail-biting landing process

New pictures from the Ingenuity helicopter offer a fresh perspective of the wreckage left behind when the Perseverance rover landed on Mars last year, NASA said on Wednesday.

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2022-04-27 14:37:56 SpaceX successfully launches latest crew of astronauts to the space station for NASA
From left to right: Jessica Watkins, Kjell Lindgren, Samantha Cristoforetti, Bob Hines

SpaceX successfully launched the crew from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center at 3:52AM ET. The astronauts will now spend roughly 17 hours en route to the ISS, and are due to dock with the space station at around 8:15PM ET

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2022-04-22 22:55:36 Check out NASA’s latest footage of a solar eclipse on Mars

It’s the highest-quality footage of an eclipse on Mars to date



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2022-04-20 20:29:04 ‘Micronova’ explosions spotted on distant zombie stars
A new type of way for stars to explode

Star explosions can happen on very different scales, from massive supernovae to plain old novae. Now, scientists think they’ve identified an even smaller way for a star’s surface to explode — dubbed the “micronova.” It’s a type of explosion that occurs in just one region on the surface of some stars, lasting for hours at a time but still packing quite a punch.

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2022-04-18 18:51:55 China's Shenzhou 13 capsule lands with crew of 3 after record-setting mission.
The Shenzhou 13 crew spent six months in orbit.

The touchdown wrapped up the Shenzhou 13 mission, which spent a national-record six months in orbit, the vast majority of it aboard Tianhe. The longest previous Chinese crewed mission was Shenzhou 12, which sent three astronauts to the nascent station for 92 days last year.

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2022-04-17 16:35:54 On April 17, 1970, Apollo 13 returned to Earth after narrowly avoiding a deadly disaster in space.
This was supposed to be the third mission to land on the moon.

Astronauts Jim Lovell, Jack Swigert and Fred Haise launched on April 11 and were two days into their trip to the moon when an oxygen tank exploded, and NASA had to abort the mission. When the astronauts called mission control to report the incident, Swigert uttered the famous quote, "Houston, we've had a problem."

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2022-04-12 14:46:22 On This Day In Space: April 12, 1961: Yuri Gagarin becomes 1st human in space

On April 12, 1961, a human went to space for the first time. Yuri Gagarin was the first Soviet cosmonaut and the first person to orbit the Earth.

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2022-04-10 23:38:05 NASA’s Curiosity Mars Rover Reroutes Away From ‘Gator-Back’ Rocks
To avoid patches of knife-edged rocks, the mission has taken an alternative path up Mount Sharp.

NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover spent most of March climbing the “Greenheugh Pediment” – a gentle slope capped by rubbly sandstone. The rover briefly summited this feature’s north face two years ago; now on the pediment’s southern side, Curiosity has navigated back onto the pediment to explore it more fully.

But on March 18, the mission team saw an unexpected terrain change ahead and realized they would have to turn around: The path before Curiosity was carpeted with more wind-sharpened rocks, or ventifacts, than they have ever seen in the rover’s nearly 10 years on the Red Planet.

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